FixitUp Find: Painting Stripes Just Got Easier

It took me a while to get my head around this one, but it looks like this tool—to help paint stripes and linear patterns on walls, furniture, floors, and so on—might just be crazy enough to work. When painters lay out a surface for stripes, they have to shoot plumb or level lines with a laser or scribe with a level. They then have to measure from line to line in several places to keep them uniform. This is persnickety work to be sure. When there are repeating patterns like this on a carpentry or woodworking project the better the craftsman the LESS he uses his tape. Instead, he or she relies on a marking gauge. It doesn’t change and you can’t read a 9 instead of a 6. That’s essentially the idea behind U-Stripe it. The sliding X-frame looks like a tool a ship captain would use for plotting course on a paper chart (before GPS). Extend the tool to the stripe width you want and use it as a guide for applying the tape (we’ve had great luck with Frog Tape). It can hang on the wall for hands free work or you can move it along a little quicker by working with a helper. The website — www.UStripeIt.com — has some pretty fantastic looking rooms.  And, it appears as though it has been Grundy-ized by being voted “Top 20 Cool Tools” of 2010.